Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

Robert Lowell (1917-1977) was a major postwar American poet and the founder of the confessionalist school. He taught Anne Sexton & Sylvia Plath; he was friends with, but often criticized by, Elizabeth Bishop.

Robert Lowell is slightly more likely than other late-20th-century American poets to appear on the GRE Literature exam. Read the poems below at least once; poems in bold should be read at least twice.

1. "The Drunken Fisherman"
2. "Skunk Hour (for Elizabeth Bishop)"
3. "Mr. Edwards and the Spider"
-A reference to the colonial American preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards.